


Faded

by doozerdoodles



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adoribull - Freeform, Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Modern AU, The Fade, ghost au, library ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6679294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doozerdoodles/pseuds/doozerdoodles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Iron Bull is a ghost haunting a library. Dorian Pavus is a university student with a gift for Necromancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The Iron Bull dies in a tremendous battle that shakes the foundations of more than one nation and sees him interred in a thousand years of rubble. It’s off-putting, because being a ghost wasn’t really something he’d anticipated dealing with. Not a part of the teachings he was raised on.

There’s a kind of nice moment when his old crew finds the place and pour one out for him, but mostly it just makes him feel lousy. They look so deeply, genuinely heartbroken, but he can also see that they’ll heal. The way they lean into each other is telling. It’s nice; reassuring. 

There’s a moment when they’re rolling out, Dalish pauses mid step and turns to look back, almost as though she’s seeing him. Bull lifts a hand, but she doesn’t wave back. _Nuts_ , he thinks.

*

Architecture gets ugly, and so many things get built on top of each other, more cramped and more crowded. A few times it’s a library, and Bull likes that. The first few times he reads over shoulders, waits for people to leave books open on the tables. The languages aren’t always easy to parse, but void knows he’s got time to _learn_.

So much friggin time.

After a century he figures out how to turn pages. After two he can knock the books off shelves and onto the floors and can choose what he wants to read. Sometimes his knee aches until he reminds himself that’s _ridiculous_ , and it stops.

Then it’s a factory for a long time, which seems great at first- lotta people in one place doing exactly what they should be, nice, ordered, everyone with a task- until he realizes what a shit deal those people got, and he spends a lot of years being angry, and that’s when he figures out that anger makes it way, way easier to effect the world around him. 

After a while the factory shuts down. Burns down, actually. Miraculously, there are no casualties.

He’s pretty pleased with himself, except for the fact that they just let the place stay a ruined lot afterward.

*

They break new ground and start building again, and Bull manages not to cause too much trouble during construction. He doesn’t want to see those guys hurt, they’re hard workers. If someone misses a step or leaves something where it shouldn’t be, he tries to make sure it gets fixed. Can be tricky, not giving the game away. Spooking the workers won’t help the thing turn into whatever it’s going to turn into any faster.

Ends up being a library. Bull hopes they put in an erotic fiction section.

*

It’s nice. Real nice. Turns out to be the new library for the University of Orlais, go figure. It’s filled with students and scholars. Not, he notices, a lot of elves or Qunari, but there are a few. He follows them around and listens to them talk about home, about their journey to the school, their classes. Being Vashoth seems to carry no stigma at all and Bull is… fine with it. Glad, even. The three Qunari who regularly visit the library are bright, driven. One’s a mage. That’s weird, but…

Well, the world has clearly changed. 

Some days, Bull feels a little more isolated than others. He would’ve thought he’d gotten used to that feeling after so many years. 

The place starts emptying out as the sun dips, but there are always students there late. Most of them are hunched over desks, exhausted. Tonight, there’s one roaming the stacks in the magic theory section, footsteps steady, a silken voice murmuring to itself. Himself. Bull meanders that way, curious, ears pricking at what sounds fleetingly like Tevene.

He finds a beautiful young man with his nose and perfectly curled mustache in a book, talking to himself, taking aloud notes he can’t write in the margins, it would seem. Tevinter, definitely, and isn’t that a hell of a thing. Bull takes up an easy slouch against a stack, ready to settle in and enjoy the view for a while, when the man lifts his face to meet Bull’s eye and says, “You haven’t a pen, have you?”

There’s a moment’s ringing silence as Bull tries to process what’s happening and the young man seems to realize he’s talking to someone wearing armor, kind of.

“What,” Bull says, and he can hear his own voice in his own ears, like he always does, but the young man seems to hear him, too.

“Perhaps… not, I don’t see any pockets. Have I stumbled into some sort of sad LARPing event? You really oughtn’t hold those places people have use for.”

“What?” Bull says again, turning to see if- no, there’s no one else around them, the man is definitely addressing _him_.

“Fine, ‘historical reenactment- club’, or whatever you’d like it to be called,” the Vint snips. “This isn’t the place for it.”

“…yeah, you’re probably right,” Bull says, and the Vint rolls his eyes theatrically.

“What’s your name?” Bull asks, without the easy, charming nonchalance he once might have. It’s important to him, suddenly. To know.

“Dorian,” Dorian replies, eyebrows at an unimpressed angle.

“I’m Bull,” Bull offers, hoping- what? Hoping desperately for- what?

Dorian snorts and shakes his head, pulling his book back up, and wild despair flutters through whatever is left of Bull’s being. Maybe just enough, apparently, to be seen.

“Well, Bull, I’d say it’s a pleasure, but…”

His name. The part of it he remembers, anyway. His name. Someone’s said it. Out loud. To him. Bull feels a strange swelling of elation and something else he can’t put a label to, any more.

“The pleasure’s all mine,” he grins, exhilarated in a way he cannot remember feeling, and the sconce lighting that corner of the stacks flares up until it shorts out, stutters into darkness. Dorian curses, more annoyed than alarmed, and goes from bewildered to stunned when he finds that nearly eight feet of grinning Qunari has disappeared into thin air.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second meeting.

For a while after he sees Dorian in the stacks, Bull finds himself- disconcertingly- nowhere. It’s just a grey-black place that feels cavernous but has no discernible boundaries. He thinks he’s been there before, but it’s hard to be sure about that kind of thing. It’s like a fog rolled in when the wall sconce broke, and so Bull walks, because it’s not like there’s shit else to do, and at some point he takes a step and the fog rolls away and he’s in the library again.

Fucking Fade bullshit, is probably what it is, but of all the things he’s picked up in the… however the hell long it’s been since he died, insights into the Fade aren’t on the list.

It’s around sunset. He can see the sky purpling at the tops of the library’s windows, the muted glow of the setting sun casting the adjacent buildings as black silhouettes. There are still plenty of people wandering around, and Bull feels more at ease. For the first time in a while, he hopes he wasn’t gone long; actually spares a moment to consider the passage of time.

A few students are arguing something at a low table piled with books, and he smiles to himself as he wanders by them, toward the magical theory section in the back of the first floor. It might be unlikely, but hey, you never know. He’s walking past the stairs when he hears something he’s _never heard before_ , and it stops him in his tracks and makes his- well, it doesn’t make his pulse pound harder or his ears strain, those aren’t things that actually exist anymore, but it feels like it does, and how fucking weird and a little awesome is that?

Bull follows the noise up through two stories of library until he sources it to a balcony that overlooks the main reading hall. The hall is six stories tall, with massive windows that curve along the ceiling. It’s a hell of a room. The balcony overlooking it is private and small and has a wrought iron banister and two older, slightly shabby oak study tables, and one young, slightly drawn looking Tevinter named Dorian sitting cross legged atop one of them, foregoing chairs. There are a lot of old looking books and mangled scratch paper around him, and a small chunk of raw crystal in the palm of his hand, and it’s _singing_.

Bull gives himself a moment to contemplate the scene (looks like some cagey, magey bullshit, if you ask him, but he doesn’t really mind it so much, given the circumstances), and eventually takes up a lounge against the staircase railing to watch. Dorian huffs a sigh and closes his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his handsome features, and Bull says, “That was neat. What makes it do that?”

Dorian startles so abruptly he nearly falls to his death, and Bull surges forward to try and stop it from happening but only gets a solid grip on the young man’s sleeve for a half a moment. Dorian is swearing at him and gripping the edge of the table and shaking, so Bull backs off. He’s seen half drowned cats look friendlier.

“- _shante kaffas_ , you oaf, I couldn’t- _Maker_!” Dorian finishes, catching his breath. Bull keeps his hands up and some distance between them.

“Sorry. Really.”

Dorian glowers at him, eyes too round for the look to be an effective glare.

“You could hear it?” he demands, and his voice barely shakes.

“Hear what?”

“The summoning crystal.”

“Summoning?” Bull echoes, squinting at the clearish chunk of white rock.

“Yes, the entire point is to- cast a sort of beacon. For wandering spirits.”

There’s a moment of silence as Bull looks from the crystal to Dorian, utterly nonplussed.

“ _Well_ ,” Dorian starts testily, drawing himself up, “that’s what you are, aren’t you? You’re a- that is- you are a ghost.” He tugs his hooded sweatshirt into place and clears his throat.

“…Right?”

“Uuuh,” Bull answers, letting that drag out for a second. Are there rules? Is he allowed to talk about this? No one ever showed up to give him a run down on the expected behavior of… wandering spirits… and anyway, he hasn’t really wandered, he’s pretty much stuck in the one spot.

“Yeah,” he decides, “I guess that works. I’m a ghost.”

Dorian covers his mouth with one hand, eyes bright, reflecting back the lamplight. Bull waits for him to say something else, but the mage doesn’t. Bull grins.

“Speechless, huh? Yeah, I have that effect.”

“You’re a ghost,” Dorian says, words colored with awe, letting his hand fall. “You’re- I’m convening with spirits from beyond the veil.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s just the one spirit, don’t get too worked up.”

“Don’t ruin this for me,” Dorian warns, and Bull is charmed.

“Sure, sorry.”

“…I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,” Dorian volunteers after a minute, rearranging himself to again sit cross legged, resting his forearms over his knees, looking Bull over thoroughly. Bull resists the urge to flex.

“Truthfully I wasn’t sure I’d seen you to begin with.”

Bull chuckles at that and rubs at the back of one of his horns.

“I gotta admit to being a little… thrown, myself. Been a while since someone spoke to me.”

“Oh?” Dorian asks, tilting his head.

“Yeah,” Bull says, deciding to leave it at that. Dorian presses at the bow of his lower lip with the nail of one thumb, gaze still wide. Bull can see the cogs turning behind them, moving fast.

“…well,” Dorian ventures, “we can talk. If you like.”

“We are talking,” Bull points out with a quiet grin and Dorian huffs a laugh, straightening up.

“That we are. I have questions. Obviously,” he laughs, then stills himself. Absently reaches up to graze a hand over his hair, as though making sure it’s still in place. “If you’re amenable.”

“Sure,” Bull says, lumbering to the table. With a burst of concentration he drags a chair out from the table and settles into it, leaning back. Dorian watches all of it with blatant, open fascination.

“You can- with tangible objects- can you feel them? How does it work? Can you touch _any_ thing?”

“Pretty forward, Dorian,” Bull drawls, amused, and Dorian is so taken aback that he stiffens up and actually sniffs in place of finding words. It’s adorable. Bull keeps that to himself.

“That’s not what- I- Of course,” he mutters to himself, “of course I make contact with the ghost of a flirtatious Qunari barbarian, why not?”

Bull just purses his lips and nods, consideringly.

“I like it. Better than something boring like ‘the grey ghost’ or ‘the blue lady’ or that kinda crap. ‘You hear the university library’s haunted?’,” he starts, imitating the students ( _imitating Krem_ , his mind supplies, and it’s almost enough to throw him, but he’s learned not to hold onto those kinds of thoughts too tightly. They come, they go, he hopes they come back). Dorian’s expression shifts toward disbelieving.

“’No way’,” Bull continues, “’by who?’ ‘The flirtatious Qunari barbarian.’ ‘Holy shit, that sounds great-‘”

“Stop,” Dorian says lightly, eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. “Stop stop.”

Bull does, pulling a look at the Tevinter, expectant.

“…What’s your name? Your real- or full- name, I can’t imagine it’s just ‘Bull’,” Dorian says.

Bull frowns, not displeased by the question, just with himself.

“…nah. It’s not always easy to remember things. I don’t try to, much. But I think once I was called Ashkaari.” It sounds right. He hasn’t thought about it before, at least not for a few centuries. “Then after that, the Iron Bull.”

“The Iron Bull?” Dorian echoes, looking up from where he’s belatedly started jotting notes. Bull nods, and feels a grin tug at the corner of his mouth.

“Yeah, the article is important.”

“I’ll make a note,” Dorian drawls, but reflects Bull’s smile back at him. “Do you know when- when it is you died?”

Bull blows a breath-that-isn’t through his lips, and Dorian cants an eyebrow at him.

“Long time ago,” Bull says, shrugging. “Real long-ass time ago. This was a temple, I can’t… I can almost remember what it looked like.”

Dorian’s hand stills and he looks at Bull with an emotion that’s difficult for Bull to place.

“This?” Dorian echoes. “This… you mean, you’ve always been… here?” Bull nods.

“Not much of a wandering spirit, sorry to disappoint-“

“You haven’t,” Dorian says swiftly, decisively. “Truly. I don’t think you could. Just… please, tell me- everything.” He grins at Bull, face alight, and Bull likes how it makes him feel. Probably just because it’s been an eon since anyone actually has. Still, he’ll take it.

“Sure,” he says, and tells Dorian about the other libraries, and the factories. Different stories come to mind, and after the library has emptied out and, Bull can sense, it truly is just the two of them, he tells Dorian a story about a nobleman and a giant that sets Dorian laughing, and the noise is so genuine and lovely that Bull feels like he did when the summoning crystal was sounding its clear, ringing note through the library; like the sound of Dorian’s laugh is reverberating through him and making him feel more real, somehow.

Eventually Dorian nods off on his folded arms, but he jolts awake again and looks bewildered and, for a moment, almost scared- but he calms when his eyes land on Bull.

“Forgive me,” Dorian says, scrubbing at his eyes, “how rude-“

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” Bull says. “You can sleep. I’ve been hanging around here a while. And now that I’ve got company as compelling as yours, I’m sure as shit not planning on going anywhere.”

Dorian’s eyebrows edge slightly toward each other and he squints at Bull, but the disdainful effect is ruined by the sweet, wry twist at the corner of his mouth.

“Did you just wink at me?”

“Yeah!” Bull says, “you caught that?”

Dorian laughs and groans at the same time and shoves his books and papers and the summoning crystal into his bag, even slings it around himself, but then stops and folds his arms on the table again to go back to watching Bull.

“You can talk a little more, if you like,” he offers, “I’m listening.”

Bull smiles indulgently, and rumbles off a story about the time the library that was standing where they are was shut down after a poetess read a piece of her work so indecent the local authorities were certain the Maker would shake the place down to rubble around their very ears. Dorian falls asleep with his moustache skewed a little against his arm, and Bull watches him until he hears the far-distant sound of doors opening and morning voices greeting each other, rebounding off the stacks and halls and desks, and he gets up to murmur in Dorian’s ear, “Up you get, ‘Vint. Go home.”, and when Dorian rouses, Bull makes sure he’s out of sight.

Dorian casts around for Bull, then shakes himself and says, to the ceiling, more or less, “I’m coming back tomorrow,” before swaggering tiredly down the stairs, tugging his hoodie up. Bull watches that, too, and whistles low to himself.

It was a long enough wait, but if this is the company he gets to keep now, even if it’s just for a while, maybe it wasn’t so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how the hell they're gonna end up kissing, but I'm no damn quitter, so stay tuned. Sorry the title sucks.


End file.
